Acceso usuarios
Karl Peter Schön
This article explores the path to the first European Conference of Ministers responsible for Regional Planning (CEMAT) which took place from September 9 to 11, 1970 in Bonn, Germany. It briefly sketches the development of regional policy and spatial planning as one element of reconstruction and reconciliation after World War II by investigating how far newly founded international organisations (like UN/UNECE, OEEC/OECD, CoE, ECSC/ EEC) were concerned with and important for regional development in Europe. The article gives some examples for beginning European communication and cooperation of spatial planners at local and regional levels. In its main part the article tells the story how the Council of Europe (CoE) became the main platform for a European spatial planning debate in the 1960s, a process which eventually led to the first CEMAT conference in Bonn in 1970. The consensus reached in this conference, as recorded in the three resolutions adopted by the conference, will be summarised and the path from Bonn to Torremolinos and the “European regional/spatial planning charter (Torremolinos Charter”, 13 years later, briefly sketched.
